After the London Wagner Festival of 1877, Hans Richter concentrated his musical activities in Vienna, adding London after 1879 and Bayreuth after 1888 with occasional forays to such places as Birmingham and the German venues of the Lower Rhine Music Festival. Vienna was his domicile, where his family was based and his children born and educated. It was here that his living had to be earned and the mouths of six children (all born between 1875 and 1882) filled. His post of Hofopernkapellmeister at the opera was not well paid and in order to increase his income, he gradually acquired other posts in the city. The first of these was Vize-Hofkapellmeister (or Deputy Conductor to the Court Chapel) at the end of 1877, when a vacancy occurred upon the death of Johann Herbeck.

Here was another example of Richter returning to his musical roots. Already he was conductor (Hofopernkapellmeister) of the opera orchestra in which he had begun his musical career as a horn player at the Kärntnertortheater. Now he was rejoining the Hofkapelle, where he had been a choirboy twenty-three years earlier. Herbeck had also held a multitude of posts in Vienna, among them Vize-Hofkapellmeister from 1863 and Kapellmeister upon his promotion three years later. The domino effect of his death on 28 October 1877 was that Josef Hellmesberger senior succeeded him as Kapellmeister, thus vacating his own post of Vize-Kapellmeister, for which written applications were received from the court organists Anton Bruckner and Rudolf Bibl, from the director of the Singakademie Rudolf Weinwurm and from Ludwig von Brenner, a native of Vienna but currently music director in Berlin. Verbal applications (made after discreet soundings had been taken by court officials) were received from Hans Richter, Pius Richter and Josef Hellmesberger junior for the two posts. A letter of recommendation from Prince Constantine zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst was sent to Emperor Franz Josef, as a result of which Hellmesberger senior's promotion was formally ratified on 11 November 1877 and Hans Richter's appointment followed on the 19th. Pius Richter, a court organist and no relation of Hans, was awarded an honorary Vize-Kapellmeistership.